7 Moves Dell Must Make Now

Dell's decision to go private was a bold step, but the company must continue making aggressive decisions to succeed.

By going private, Dell has extricated itself from Wall Street's fickle grasp. No longer beholden to quarterly earnings reports and fluctuation in shareholder loyalties, the company is now free to invest for the long term, even -- as Michael Dell has said in the past -- if it means suffering some temporary losses along the way.

This flexibility is all well and good -- but what should Dell do to capitalize on it? Even before the buyout, the Round Rock, Texas-based company faced pressure from all sides. Poor PC sales have attracted the bulk of attention, but even Dell's stronger businesses face challenges that require agile and responsive leadership. Software-defined networking, virtualization and converged data center infrastructures are encroaching on traditional server and storage markets, for example, and though Dell has been active in keeping pace with these advances, so, too, have its competitors. InformationWeek breaks down seven actions Dell can take to successfully reinvent itself as a private company.

1. Rebrand Itself

Though Dell's Nasdaq departure will allow the company to work outside public scrutiny, the company nonetheless needs to focus on its corporate branding. Dell has spent the last few years building a broad software and services portfolio but has been unable to shake its reputation as a PC-oriented company.

In an interview, Gartner analyst Nik Simpson said the problem isn't that Dell's enterprise offerings don't deliver; it's that "people still associate Dell with going to a website and buying a cheap PC." To succeed, he said, Dell needs to effectively communicate that they're more than just a low-cost solution by emphasizing the support and integration that large organizations demand.

2. Become More Cohesive

Ironically, Dell's proactive efforts to expand its portfolio have contributed to the company's struggle to forge a new identity. Forrester analyst David Johnson wrote in a blog post that acquisitions have made the company too complex, and that its reorganization as a private company should focus on streamlining its businesses. In an interview, he said that over the last few years, "Most people really couldn't put a finger on what Dell was living for," adding, "Dell was lacking focus." He pointed out that private companies "lose the drag of all the regulatory compliance stuff they go through when they combine companies," meaning that Dell's buyout should allow the company to begin realigning business objectives relatively quickly and efficiently.

3. Push The Innovation Envelope

As mentioned, Dell faces competition from all angles -- not only within its traditional PC business but also within its newer software offerings. To succeed, the company needs to bring cohesion to its portfolio, as well as differentiate its offerings in terms of not only product and support features but also pricing models.

Cindy Shaw, managing director at investment analytics firm Discern, asserted in an investors' note that a "private Dell is likely to more aggressively cut costs" but warned that "merely restructuring only postpones the inevitable." Shaw noted that virtualization is poised to shrink the storage market, meaning that another of Dell's hardware-based revenue streams is poised for a shakeup. She suggested Dell could reinvent itself by not only focusing on innovative technologies but also selling them at lower margins in order to gain market share.

Gartner analyst Mark Margevicius noted in an interview that Michael Dell "really does like to innovate and to differentiate," and said the company could focus on "really cool devices that appeal to audiences beyond the PC space," asking, "Who's to say they can't be the next Samsung?"

Leslie Fiering, also a Gartner analyst, remarked during a phone conversation that Dell could change its public image by pursuing cloud infrastructure opportunities. She said such moves involve a "steep curve" but countered that Michael Dell has faced such challenges before. "When he wanted to go into servers, everybody said, 'What do you know about data centers and servers?'" she stated. "He was able to bring software and automation and things unheard of at the time ... Now, it's laughably simple, but these are the kinds of innovations Dell has been able to bring."

The head of Dell's Wyse group received a lot of press from the announcement of "Project Ophelia" at CES 2013. Ophelia is a MiniPC dongle running Android 4.1 with HDMI, USB, Wireless and Bluetooth connectivity and a target retail price of US$50 at a purported 50% gross margin. However, it would take sales of 10 Ophelias to equal the revenue from one tablet or laptop PC; maybe 5 for equal gross profit if the 50% margin could be achieved.

Ophelia appears to be a clone of CozySwan's UG007 device, which differs only in its power source: a wallwart rather than siphoning from the monitor/HDTV set. For a comparison of the two MiniPCs, see http://oakleafblog.blogspot.co....

Microsoft might raise a ruckus about using Android as the OS, but it's doubtful if such a device would have the horsepower to run Windows RT.

Just because the server market's in the doldrums doesn't mean innovation has ceased. Far from it -- server technology is enjoying the biggest renaissance since the dawn of x86 systems. But the primary driver is now service providers, not enterprises.